On Self-translation

Lin Yutang is a prominent writer who has a thorough knowledge of both western and Chinese cultures. Besides, he is also an accomplished translator doing self-translation and forms his own ideas on translation. He translated many Chinese and western classics, promoting communication between two cultures. The present study in China pays much attention to Lin’s thoughts and his translation of Chinese classics, while relatively less attention to his self-translation. Between Tears and Laughter, with both self-translation and non-authorial translation available, arouses more and more scholarly interest. Based on a comparison of self-translation by Lin Yutang and non-authorial translation by Xu Chengbin, this thesis tries to answer the following questions. First, what translation strategies and methods do Lin Yutang and Xu Chengbin adopt in the process of translating Between Tears and Laughter?What are the similarities and differences? Second, In the process of translating, what are the purposes of Lin Yutang and Xu Chengbin respectively? Third, compared with non-authorial translation, does self-translation enjoy more creative freedom? And what are the distinctive features between Lin’s self-translation and Xu’s non-authorial translation? What are the reasons for these features?For each translation text has its own purpose, the Skopos Theory can be applied to non-literary translation as well as the literary translation. The thesis intends to apply the theory to the study of Lin Yutang’s translation strategies and methods and those adopted by Xu Chengbin.In order to answer the questions above, the author of this thesis adopts the method of description and contrast to study Lin Yutang’s self-translating strategies and methods and Xu Chengbin’s non-authorial translation strategies and methods, with the aim to find the influences on their translation behaviors from different translating purposes of Lin Yutang and Xu Chengbin. The methods of induction and deduction are jointly used to wedge the viewpoints of "three rules" of the Skopos Theory into the study of Lin Yutang’s and Xu Chengbin’s behavior. Meanwhile, the author will also list enough translation examples to illustrate clearly the viewpoints about Lin Yutang’s and Xu Chengbin’s translations.It is found out that Lin Yutang adopts translation strategies like domestication and foreignization and methods like addition, conversion, paraphrase, back-translation and deletion which are determined to a great extent by his translation purpose:to give full consideration to his target readers and attract more potential readers; to promote cross-cultural communication. And his self-translation displays some features like conveying the general meaning instead of word-for-word translation, using more familiar Chinese expressions and flexible syntactical structures and enjoying more freedom to convey the meaning and to reach his translation purpose. All these features may stem from the following facts:natural advantage as a self-translator; conformation to his own translation ideas and his particular translation purposes. On the other hand, Lin Yutang sets an example in the translation of previous 11 chapters. Xu Chengbin adopts almost the same translation strategies and methods to reach his translation purpose, which is to be responsible for Lin Yutang. In this case, due to his lack of perfect interpretation of the source text, it turns out that Xu Chengbin’s conformation of Lin Yutang’s translation purpose and criteria makes him cater to the original author and the source text, which leads to some mistakes in Xu’s translation text.Through answering the above questions, it is hoped that this thesis can help people to get a better idea of the nature of self-translation and makes due contribution to the systematic study on Lin Yutang’s self-translation. More perspectives can be adopted to study self-translation.